Guilds raiding 60-70 hours now?

[I am talking World First, top ~10 guild challengers]

What ever happened to the 5pm-10pm 5 days per week model for hardcore players? When 5.2 was released, I kept track on the hours certain guild(s) were in ToT, and the first day it was 15 hours (afternoon until 3am local time). The second day it was about 14 hours, and that schedule has been pretty consistent. They are starting 25man raids in the afternoon now and ending past midnight.

In the Race To World First documentary, they clearly stated that they raid 35 hours per week. What has caused that to increase so dramatically?

It's been like this for a while, though it is an ever increasing arms race as it were. 'Hardcore' raiding being evenings only stopped in Sunwell when SK Gaming started raiding all day and world firsted some of the last bosses - including Kil'jaeden. Other top guilds such as Nihilum at the time had to answer in kind and start early mornings in order to keep up. That has now evolved into raiding as much as humanly possible for the tip top guilds. Note that only an extremely small minority raid such amounts.

Could/Should Blizzard do anything about this I wonder? Like, say, 50 heroic attempts (off the top of my head), and if not killed in X amount of attempts, then it must be killed in Normal mode before trying the next heroic boss. Some guilds like Midwinter did this.. After spending the day wiping, they just killed it on Normal mode and moved on to the next heroic.

Which is why I care more for kills on bosses like Ra-Den. If you watch a lot of top guilds, they have a LOT of players that fuck up really easy mechanics. With Ra-den you can't just mindlessly grind until you've learnt it, you need to go in and do it properly as soon as possible - No lifeing won't save you with him. It doesn't matter how good you are, if you don't raid for the majority of your life - You will not get ANYWHERE near a world first.

Which is why I care more for kills on bosses like Ra-Den. If you watch a lot of top guilds, they have a LOT of players that fuck up really easy mechanics. With Ra-den you can't just mindlessly grind until you've learnt it, you need to go in and do it properly as soon as possible - No lifeing won't save you with him.

Limited attempts = hours of talking strats before pulls.

Originally Posted by BlueRet

"This server shutdown was so epic not even Illidan was prepared for it"

Could/Should Blizzard do anything about this I wonder? Like, say, 50 heroic attempts (off the top of my head), and if not killed in X amount of attempts, then it must be killed in Normal mode before trying the next heroic boss. Some guilds like Midwinter did this.. After spending the day wiping, they just killed it on Normal mode and moved on to the next heroic.

That doesn't really reduce raid time. 50 attempts, with each fight taking 10-15 minutes,for each boss is still a few days of time.

What ever happened to the 5pm-10pm 5 days per week model for hardcore players? When 5.2 was released, I kept track on the hours certain guild(s) were in ToT, and the first day it was 15 hours (afternoon until 3am local time). The second day it was about 14 hours, and that schedule has been pretty consistent. They are starting 25man raids in the afternoon now and ending past midnight.

In the Race To World First documentary, they clearly stated that they raid 35 hours per week. What has caused that to increase so dramatically?

Well... it being competitive, and the competition putting in more hours, means you will put in more hours to get ahead, and it will go on and on.

It does perplex me, because really there's only 3 (maybe 4, if you're charitable) guilds who are competitive with the WF races now. They could easily agree with a limited schedule or designated 'off-night' for them to recuperate. If there can be cease fires in wars I don't see why that would be impossible.

i just wonder how they can keep a regular 9-5 job, or as me, a 6-16 job, while raiding for so long.

guess they a basement dwellers getting everything paid by their parrents. or maybe they are robots? who knows?

Originally Posted by vertex705

They have sponsors

Yea, sure they have sponsors. But thats not how it works! Basically, raiding for a guild like that means you'll take days off work, school, hobby, w/e in order to make this many hours during progression.

Once progression is over, these guilds usually clear all the content in 1-2 evenings.

What ever happened to the 5pm-10pm 5 days per week model for hardcore players? When 5.2 was released, I kept track on the hours certain guild(s) were in ToT, and the first day it was 15 hours (afternoon until 3am local time). The second day it was about 14 hours, and that schedule has been pretty consistent. They are starting 25man raids in the afternoon now and ending past midnight.

In the Race To World First documentary, they clearly stated that they raid 35 hours per week. What has caused that to increase so dramatically?

You're looking at two radically different things.

1) Garden variety heroic raiding guilds: these tend to raid 3-5 days per week, for 4-5 hrs per night. They may be server first type guilds, or server 5th, 10th etc. Depends on the realm and the guild.

2) World first raiding guilds: these guys are a totally different deal, when progression is on they devote ENORMOUS amounts of time to raiding in a feverish effort to get the bosses down first in the world. Although usually these kinds of guilds only have that level of activity for a few weeks before progression finishes, then things go on farm and they faceroll it all in a few nights. Which is necessary because otherwise they'd go insane.

Trust me, top guilds don't spend 35 hours on farm content. I remember back in ICC, guilds such as For the Horde did full HC clears in around 1 hour. Let's assume they had 2 alts each and that alt runs were slower. Let's say 4 hours a week.

Top guilds raid *much* more than 'normal' guilds during progression, and *much* less during farm because they clear the raid mindblowingly fast while most others are still progressing.

I remember Paragon stating that they raided like 17 hours in a row before they got their Cho'gall heroic (world second) kill. And if you watch the world's first video you will get an impression that they raid every day. No one is only raiding 35 hours a week. Karfagen openly stated that they raided up to 20 hours a day in the video. That was back in Cataclysm, and I doubt much have changed. Surely many of the guilds have quit, but new guilds have arrised with the same raiding schedule as the top 5 guilds back then.

Originally Posted by vertex705

They have sponsors

They don't get paid for this outside of that one guy that streams it. They may get sponsor gifts as in head phones and mousepads... but that is basically it.